Mobility, Taxation and Welfare

Income mobility is often thought to equalize permanent incomes and thereby to improve social welfare. The welfare analysis of mobility often fails, however, to account for the cost of the variability of periodic incomes around permanent incomes. This paper assesses the net welfare benefit of mobility by assuming both a social aversion to inequality in permanent incomes and an individual aversion to variability in periodic incomes. The paper further investigates the combined (and comparative) impact of mobility and of the tax system (another presumed income equalizer) on the dynamics of income across time and on the inequality of income across individuals. Using panel data, we find that Canada's tax system limits significantly the redistributive impact of mobility while also lowering considerably the cost of income variability. The permanent income equalizing effect of taxes can reach up to 23 percent of mean income at the higher values of inequality aversion that we use. Globally, the net social welfare effect of both mobility and taxation is (almost always) positive and substantial, often amounting to around 30 percent of mean income. For all choices of parameter values, the tax effect exceeds by far the net effect of mobility on inequality and social welfare.mobility, social welfare, risk, income variability, inequality, permanent income

Mobility, Taxation and Welfare

Income mobility is often thought to equalize permanent incomes and thereby to improve social welfare. The welfare analysis of mobility often fails, however, to account for the cost of the variability of periodic incomes around permanent incomes. This paper assesses the net welfare benefit of mobility by assuming both a social aversion to inequality in permanent incomes and an individual aversion to variability in periodic incomes. The paper further investigates the combined (and comparative) impact of mobility and of the tax system (another presumed income equalizer) on the dynamics of income across time and on the inequality of income across individuals. Using panel data, we find that Canada’s tax system limits significantly the redistributive impact of mobility while also lowering considerably the cost of income variability. The permanent income equalizing effect of taxes can reach up to 23 percent of mean income at the higher values of inequality aversion that we use. Globally, the net social welfare effect of both mobility and taxation is (almost always) positive and substantial, often amounting to around 30 percent of mean income. For all choices of parameter values, the tax effect exceeds by far the net effect of mobility on inequality and social welfare.Mobility, social welfare, risk, income variability, inequality, permanent income

Mobility, Taxation and Welfare

Income mobility is often thought to equalize permanent incomes and thereby to improve social welfare. The welfare analysis of mobility often fails, however, to account for the cost of the variability of periodic incomes around permanent incomes. This paper assesses the net welfare benefit of mobility by assuming both a social aversion to inequality in permanent incomes and an individual aversion to variability in periodic incomes. The paper further investigates the combined (and comparative) impact of mobility and of the tax system (another presumed income equalizer) on the dynamics of income across time and on the inequality of income across individuals. Using panel data, we find that Canada’s tax system limits significantly the redistributive impact of mobility while also lowering considerably the cost of income variability. The permanent income equalizing effect of taxes can reach up to 23 percent of mean income at the higher values of inequality aversion that we use. Globally, the net social welfare effect of both mobility and taxation is (almost always) positive and substantial, often amounting to around 30 percent of mean income. For all choices of parameter values, the tax effect exceeds by far the net effect of mobility on inequality and social welfare

Capital Mobility and Tax Competition: A Survey

This paper surveys the literature on the implications of international capital mobility for national tax policies. Our main issue for consideration in this survey is whether taxation of income, specifically capital income will survive, how border crossing investment is taxed relative to domestic investment and whether welfare gains can be achieved through international tax coordination. We develop a a “working horse model” of multinational investment which allows to derive many of the key results from the literature on international taxation in a unified framework. Moreover, we put special emphasis on the problem of tax competition and financial arbitrage.tax competition, capital mobility, tax policy

A Tale of Two Labor Markets: Intergenerational Occupational Mobility in Britain and the U.S. Since 1850

The U.S. both tolerates more inequality than Europe and believes its economic mobility is greater than Europe's. These attitudes and beliefs help account for differences in the magnitude of redistribution through taxation and social welfare spending. In fact, the U.S. and Europe had roughly equal rates of inter-generational occupational mobility in the late twentieth century. We extend this comparison into the late nineteenth century using longitudinal data on 23,000 nationally-representative British and U.S. fathers and sons. The U.S. was substantially more mobile then Britain through 1900, so in the experience of those who created the U.S. welfare state in the 1930s, the U.S. had indeed been "exceptional." The margin by which U.S. mobility exceeded British mobility was erased by the 1950s, as U.S. mobility fell compared to its nineteenth century levels.

Fiscal Competition in Space and Time: An Endogenous-Growth Approach

Is tax competition good for economic growth? The paper addresses this question by means of a simple model of endogenous growth. There are many small jurisdictions in a large federation and individual governments benevolently maximise the welfare of immobile residents. Investment is costly: Quadratic installation and de-installation costs limit the mobility of capital. The paper looks at optimal taxation and long-run growth. In particular, the effects of variations in the cost parameter on economic growth and taxation are considered. It is shown that balanced endogenous growth paths do not always exist, that, if they exist, the economic growth rate is positively related to the mobility of capital, that the impact of the mobility prameter on the tax rate is ambiguous and that the tax rate may go to zero even if mobility costs are strictly positive.Fiscal Federalism, Tax Competition, Endogenous Growth

International Commodity Taxation under Monopolistic Competition

We analyze non-cooperative commodity taxation in a two-country trade model characterized by monopolistic competition and international firm and capital mobility. In this setting, taxes in one country affect foreign welfare through the relocation of mobile firms and through changes in the rents accruing to capital owners. With consumption-based taxation, these fiscal externalities exactly offset each other and the non-cooperative tax equilibrium is Pareto efficient. With production-based taxation, however, there are additional externalities on the foreign tax base and the foreign price level which lead non-cooperative tax rates to exceed their Pareto efficient levels.tax competition, market imperfections, international trade

The Effects of Tax Competition when Politicians Create Rents to Buy Political Support

We set up a probabilistic voting model to explore the hypothesis that tax competition improves public sector efficiency and social welfare. In the absence of tax base mobility, distortions in the political process induce vote-maximising politicians to create rents to public sector employees. Allowing tax base mobility may be welfare-enhancing up to a point, because the ensuing tax competition will reduce rents. However, if tax competition is carried too far, it will reduce welfare by causing an underprovision of public goods. Starting from an equilibrium where tax competition has eliminated all rents, a coordinated rise in capital taxation will always be welfare-improving. For plausible parameter values it will even be welfare-enhancing to carry tax coordination beyond the point where rents to public sector workers start to emerge.tax competition; rent seeking; probabilistic voting

International Commodity Taxation Under Monopolistic Competition

We analyze non-cooperative commodity taxation in a symmetrictwo-country trade model characterized by monopolisticcompetition and international firm and capital mobility. In thissetting, taxes in one country affect foreign welfare through therelocation of mobile firms and through changes in the rentsaccruing to capital owners. With consumption-based taxation,these fiscal externalities exactly offset each other and the non-cooperativetax equilibrium is Pareto efficient. With production-basedtaxation, however, there is an additional externality on theforeign price level which leads non-cooperative tax rates toexceed their Pareto efficient levels.tax competition, market imperfections, internationaltrade

Economic inequality and mobility in kinetic models for social sciences

Statistical evaluations of the economic mobility of a society are more difficult than measurements of the income distribution, because they require to follow the evolution of the individuals' income for at least one or two generations. In micro-to-macro theoretical models of economic exchanges based on kinetic equations, the income distribution depends only on the asymptotic equilibrium solutions, while mobility estimates also involve the detailed structure of the transition probabilities of the model, and are thus an important tool for assessing its validity. Empirical data show a remarkably general negative correlation between economic inequality and mobility, whose explanation is still unclear. It is therefore particularly interesting to study this correlation in analytical models. In previous work we investigated the behavior of the Gini inequality index in kinetic models in dependence on several parameters which define the binary interactions and the taxation and redistribution processes: saving propensity, taxation rates gap, tax evasion rate, welfare means-testing etc. Here, we check the correlation of mobility with inequality by analyzing the mobility dependence from the same parameters. According to several numerical solutions, the correlation is confirmed to be negative.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures. Proceedings of the Sigma-Phi Conference on Statistical Physics, Rhodes, 201